are numbers mounting? OR nothing to see here

This video is just over an hour, but is chock full of good info. Keep in mind this is a panel by the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics


Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics
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The Institute of Politics hosts a pop-up Forum on the unfolding Coronavirus epidemic. Join Juliette Kayyem, Faculty Chair, Homeland Security Program; Helen Branswell, Senior Writer, Infectious Disease at STAT; and Michael J. Mina, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in a moderated conversation with Rick Berke, Co-founder & Executive Editor at STAT and IOP Senior Advisory Committee Member.

When reading updates about th Coronavirus in the news or from government reports, always keep in mind who is sharing the information, their credibility, and their responsibilities/limitations. FYI, this is why we have a 2nd topic in The Health Forum for only the most credible information and straight facts about this virus; this topic here in the Science Lab under the Courthouse is more for discussion and the political side of it.
Opinion - How to Report on the COVID-19 Outbreak Responsibly
Remember, the virus doesn’t follow the news and doesn’t care about Twitter
By Bill Hanage, Marc Lipsitch, Scientific American Blogs | February 23, 2020

The profusion of information that keeps emerging about the growing COVID-19 outbreak presents challenges for reporters and the scientists they talk to when researching their stories. Good reporting and science have to distinguish legitimate sources of information from no end of rumors, half-truths, financially motivated promotions of snake-oil remedies and politically motivated propaganda.

To help in this effort, we think reporting should distinguish between at least three levels of information: (A) what we know is true; (B ) what we think is true—fact-based assessments that also depend on inference, extrapolation or educated interpretation of facts that reflect an individual’s view of what is most likely to be going on; and (C) opinions and speculation.

The Coronavirus Is Exposing the Limits of Populism
Expertise matters. Institutions matter. There is such a thing as the global community. The system must be made to work again.
Thomas Wright and Kurt M. Campbell, The Atlantic - Ideas | MARCH 4, 2020

During the 2008–09 financial crisis, the stock market, global trade, and economic growth all fell by greater margins than in the same period of the Great Depression of 1929–33. However, unlike in the 1930s, governments set aside smaller disagreements, coordinating domestic policies to save the global economy. The response, not the scale of the initial shock, mattered most. As Daniel Drezner, an international-politics professor at Tufts University, put it, the system worked.

The coronavirus, which causes the disease now called COVID-19, may be another once-in-a-century event. Unfortunately, this crisis occurs in a dark political climate, more similar to that of the early ’30s, when many governments pursued nationalist, beggar-thy-neighbor policies such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and international cooperation was very limited. Over the past decade, the world has grown more authoritarian, nationalistic, xenophobic, unilateralist, anti-establishment, and anti-expertise. The current state of politics and geopolitics has exacerbated, not stabilized, the crisis.

China is not alone in its initial missteps. President Donald Trump, a self-acknowledged germophobe, sees the outbreak through the prism of the stock market and his own reelection. He seems to put pressure on his own officials to downplay the risk posed by the virus. Trump, and some of his officials, have actually said the virus could “have a very good ending for us” or “boost jobs” in the American economy. In South Carolina, Trump said that the virus is under control, and that any notion to the contrary is a “new hoax” by Democrats to get rid of him. But there will be no escaping reality.

www.c-span.org/video/?470224-1/federal-h...us-outbreak-response